Note: This entry was updated on August 19, 2012 with an extra commentary at the end of the main text.
As an educator in higher education and researcher specializing in remix culture and authorship, when I first learned about Zakaria’s admission to plagiarism, I was very disappointed in him, and thought that there was no way around it, that his admission of plagiarizing parts of Jill Lepore‘s work on gun control written for the New Yorker puts into question his intellectual integrity.
I thought that his apology was quick and to the point, but that somehow it was not enough. I thought that it was necessary for Zakaria to come forward and explain in as much detail as possible the reasoning for his behavior. And I thought that I wasn’t alone in hoping for this to happen–that if an actual explanation was delivered, it would all serve the constructive purpose of discussing the seriousness of plagiarism with students while providing a concrete example of a public intellectual who committed such an unacceptable act.
I thought that Zakaria should give an extensive explanation, first, simply because he owed it to his audience and readers, who have come to respect his work at CNN, Time and The Washington Post; and second because it would inform, and therefore become, admittedly, an unusual contribution to the debates on intellectual property during a period when younger generations are prone to plagiarize due to the easiness of copying and pasting.
The RE/Mixed Media Festival, now in it’s 3rd year, is an annual celebration of collaborative art-making and creative appropriation. It’s the artists’ contribution to the ongoing conversation about remixing, mashups, copyright law, fair use, and the freedom of artists to access their culture in order to add to and build upon it.
The festival – which this year will take place at the Brooklyn Lyceum – a 3-floor 10,000 sq. ft. venue on the border of the Park Slope and Gowanus neighborhoods of Brooklyn – will feature performances, panel discussions, live musical collaborations, hip-hop, sampling, film & video, DIY, food and drink, DJs, technology, interactive installations, painting, sculpture, software, hacking, and much more!
The book should be available in the coming weeks in Europe, and soon after in the United States. For more information, also see the main entry about the book.
Note: Previously this entry read “book print.” This was a mistake on my part. It should be “book sprint.”
I recently read the “book sprint” New Aesthetic, New Anxieties by a group of media researchers, theorists and curators, who got together for three and a half days from June 17–21, 2012, at V2, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
The concept of coming together for just a few days to brainstorm a book is certainly something worth considering as an act of creative critical practice. The book from this standpoint functions surprisingly well, especially because its premise is delivered to match the speed of change that its subject (The New Aesthetic) experiences in the daily flow of information throughout the global network. I personally find amazing that a book of this sort can be put together with some cohesion.
The subject of the book is The New Aesthetic, a term /concept that has been making the rounds on the Internet for a bit over a year and a few months, but which really took off when Bruce Sterling wrote about it for Wired on April 2, 2012. Since then many have written about it; the latest manifestation is the book sprint.
With all respect to the authors, I will state that the text is not fully cohesive, as it becomes obvious that much of the content consists of copy/paste material that was clearly worked over to somewhat match a book format in just three and a half days. Clearly some stuff had to be written on the spot, but many of the references in the footnotes could not be gathered so quickly–or at least everyone had to come prepared with some strong references to use well before the writing sessions would begin. What the book sprint does accomplish is provide a good sense of the initial stages of The New Aesthetic in order to reposition the concept in terms of a more critical practice. The New Aesthetic, based on what I have been reading about it for a few months now, is not a term initially invested in criticality, but rather it befriends trending strategies of the design world which more often than not is primarily invested in landing major corporate contracts.
I won’t dwell on my own views on The New Aesthetic in this case. For now, I prefer to share some links that also complement The New Aesthetic, New Anxieties Book sprint. They appear below. I did not include the authors’ names, but you can certainly find them once you click on the links.
Written for Swedish Traveling Exhibitions, December 2009
Note: The following text is one of two originally published in the magazine Spana!, a publication for the Swedish Traveling Exhibitions (now called Swedish Exhibition Agency). I never got around to releasing the English version of the text until now. It contextualizes how I saw exhibitions developing in Sweden during my residency. It starts with a lecture I attended during an international symposium on contemporary curatorial practice, and revisits notes on the different art institutions I visited during my residency in Sweden in October and November of 2009. This publication in many ways is a complement to the list posted below.
The second text is Code Switching: Artists and Curators in Networked Culture.
At the end of 2009, the international approach to exhibitions across museums and public institutions appears to emphasize themes over history. This trend was recognized by Curator Jan Debbaut on Saturday November 7, during his presentation at the Symposium “Mountains of Butter, Lakes of Wine,” which took place at the Stadsteater, Stockholm. This shift has not only changed the way exhibitions are funded internationally, as Debbaut noted, but also how they are approached and contextualized. In 2009, the thematic approach repositions exhibitions as forms of communication beyond the four walls of the galleries, affecting all types of exhibiting institutions, not just museums. In my view, this resonates with various institutions I visited in Stockholm and Gothenburg during the months of October and November of 2009, as Correspondent in Residence for the Swedish Traveling Exhibitions. The following is an evaluation of how such institutions organize exhibitions as tools of communication.
Digging through my archives, I found the list of my early updates on Facebook. When I joined Facebook back in 2008, personal updates read “What are you doing?” prompted with “Your Name is … ” I liked the idea behind positioning the Facebook user in a constant state of action. It was like a performance online. Because of this set up, I found myself always thinking of what I was actually doing at the moment that I entered Facebook, and thought of creative ways to approach the apparent triviality of the updates.
I thought that I would eventually develop a project with my updates, or that I would simply keep writing them as long as I was a Facebook member. But then Facebook changed its status updates to state: “What’s on your mind?” and I could no longer perform my ongoing development towards a work of art. Thus my potential project apparently came to an abrupt end.
Below are the updates that part of me still hopes to use in some form to develop an interesting art project. But I don’t see that in the near or far future. So for now (and possibly for as long as this post is visible), they function more as mundane documentation and, to some degree, as commentary on my early days on Facebook. I share them because I realized upon my re-reading that the banality of the posts as they now are updated by members of Facebook has not faded, but rather has become watered down to appear more “thoughtful.” After all, how deep can one be when asked, “What’s on your mind?” This is equivalent to being asked by an acquaintance when passing them on the street, “how are you?”
Notes below:
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Facebook “what are you doing notes”
At this time I did not request friends and had my setting fairly open to be seen on major search engines.
The notes below are listed exactly as they appeared on Facebook. I began writing my status updates on March 20, 2008
March 20: Eduardo is looking at your profile.
March 26: Eduardo is still looking at your profile.
April 1: Eduardo is exchanging his labor for pleasure.
April 8: Eduardo is exchanging his pleasure for value.
April 12: Eduardo is debating the default state of the verb “to be” in the Facebook Interface.
April 18: Eduardo is reloading his home page to check out the adds on the left.
Apr 26, 2008: Eduardo is unable to fill this space with an action.
May 4, 2008: Eduardo is down with an empty statement.
May 13, 2008: Eduardo is excited about a new art project.
May 20, 2008: Eduardo is moving.
May 26, 2008: Eduardo is about to fly.
May 29, 2008: Eduardo is in Madrid.
June 5, 2008: Eduardo is on the move again…
June 6, 2008: Eduardo is in Barcelona
June 9, 2008: Eduardo is in Madrid, again.
June 16, 2008: Eduardo is back in LA.
June 17, 208: Eduardo is in San Diego and depressed, Lakers lost…
June 20, 2008: Eduardo is sick. Some bug he caught.
June 24, 2008: Eduardo is now sick of writing, but cannot let go of the keyboard.
June 25, 2008: Eduardo is cool now. Not as in being cool, just cool.. now.
June 30, 2008: Eduardo is.
July 7, 2008: Eduardo is [re]revising.
July 15, 2008: Eduardo is down with the stoop.
July 19, 2008: Eduardo on the move, again–going east.
July 25, 2008: Eduardo is still on the east coast, working really hard.
August 5, 2008: Eduardo is looking at his belly.
August 20: Eduardo is simply busy.
September 8: Eduardo is killing mosquitoes with his bare hands.
September 18, 2008: Eduardo is, again.
September 20, 2008: Eduardo is forgetting to write in this space what he is doing.
October 3, 2008: Eduardo is looking at leaves falling.
October 10, 2008: Eduardo is releasing a new project: http://navasse.net/traceblog/about.html.
October 19, 2008: Eduardo is listening to his own music list: https://remixtheory.net/?page_id=328
October 28, 2008: Eduardo is preparing for a long long day.
November 4, 2008: Eduardo is looking at the polls (and has voted).
November 5, 2008: Eduardo is more than the verb to be today, because we can.
November 10, 2008: Eduardo is just out of smart things to say.
November 16, 2008: Eduardo is in the middle of wishing-happy-birthday week.
November 22, 2008: Eduardo is, has been, and will be in the middle of snow for a while..
November 29, 2008: Eduardo is quite sick of Turkey, but still willing to eat it.
December 9, 2008: Eduardo s tired. Academic term almost over… Flying to warmer lands!
December 22, 2008: Eduardo is still cold. Whatever happened to California weather?!
December 26, 2008: Eduardo is still cold, second update. People in Big Bear, CA must be happy…
January 5, 2008: Eduardo is up, packing. About to go back east, yet again, back to Lalaland soon next month
January 7, 2008: Eduardo is back in the middle of snow, ice and lots and lots of rain.
January 19, 2008: Eduardo is enjoying MLK Day. Must stay up and work, work, work.
January 20, 2009: Eduardo is thinking about living history, or living in history, or living with history, or living-history: 44th presidential Inauguration of the President
February 1, 2009: Eduardo is going to watch the game with ambivalent critical distance…
February 7, 2009: Eduardo is simply chilling. Yep.
February 14, 2009: Eduardo is trying to say something that will be well data-mined.
February 28, 2009: Eduardo noticed that “is” is no longer the default on Facebook.
At this time I took myself off search engines results and privacy settings were set to their safest set up. I began to request friendships based on recommendations of people I might know, or suggested friends.
Facebook Update Status changed to “What’s on my mind”
March 16, 2009: Now I no longer need to be in a state of action, but simply express what’s on my mind. We have entered a new stage of data-mining.
April 3, 2009: Spring.
April 16, 2009: Eduardo just figured out (quite late) why Facebook changed its status hook. (cause of twits…)
We are currently conducting a survey for a Remix Studies book project and we would really appreciate your help. The survey is quick and easy and should take no more than a few minutes of your time. Your assistance will be invaluable in the development of the book, which we hope will be of great use to students, teachers, researchers and practitioners of remix alike.
If possible, we would also be very grateful if you could help us to distribute the survey to anyone within your networks who has an interest in remix.
Remix Theory: The Aesthetics of Sampling can now be pre-ordered. You can place your order on Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Powell’sl Books, or another major online bookseller in your region, anywhere in the world. The book is scheduled to be available in Europe in July, 2012 and in the U.S. in September/October of 2012.
The book will also be available electronically through university libraries that have subscriptions with Springer’s online service, Springerlink. I encourage educators who find the book as a whole, or in part, of use for classes to consider the latter option to make the material available to students at an affordable price.
Anyone should be able to preview book chapters on Springerlink once the book is released everywhere. If you would like a print copy for review, please send me, Eduardo Navas, an e-mail with your information and motivation for requesting a print version.
For all questions, please feel free to contact me at eduardo_at_navasse_dot_net.
Also, see the main entry on this book for the table of content and more information.
Below are selected excerpts from the book:
From Chapter One, Remix[ing] Sampling, page 11:
Before Remix is defined specifically in the late 1960s and ‘70s, it is necessary to trace its cultural development, which will clarify how Remix is informed by modernism and postmodernism at the beginning of the twenty-first century. For this reason, my aim in this chapter is to contextualize Remix’s theoretical framework. This will be done in two parts. The first consists of the three stages of mechanical reproduction, which set the ground for sampling to rise as a meta-activity in the second half of the twentieth century. The three stages are presented with the aim to understand how people engage with mechanical reproduction as media becomes more accessible for manipulation. […]The three stages are then linked to four stages of Remix, which overlap the second and third stage of mechanical reproduction.
From Chapter two, Remix[ing] Music, page 61:
To remix is to compose, and dub was the first stage where this possibility was seen not as an act that promoted genius, but as an act that questioned authorship, creativity, originality, and the economics that supported the discourse behind these terms as stable cultural forms. […] Repetition becomes the privileged mode of production, in which preexisting material is recycled towards new forms of representation. The potential behind this paradigm shift would not become evident until the second stage of Remix in New York City, where the principles explored in dub were further explored in what today is known as turntablism: the looping of small sections of records to create new beats—instrumental loops, on top of which MCs and rappers would freestyle, improvising rhymes. […]
From Chapter Three, Remix[ing] Theory, page 125:
Once the concept of sampling, as understood in music during the ‘70s and ‘80s, was introduced as an activity directly linked to remixing different elements beyond music (and eventually evolved into an influential discourse), appropriation and recycling as concepts changed at the beginning of the twenty-first century; they cannot be considered on the same terms prior to the development of machines specifically design for remixing. This would be equivalent to trying to understand the world in terms of representation prior to the photo camera. Once a specific technology is introduced it eventually develops a discourse that helps to shape cultural anxieties. Remix has done and is currently doing this to concepts of appropriation. Remix has changed how we look at the production of material in terms of combinations. This is what enables Remix to become an aesthetic, a discourse that, like a virus, can move through any cultural area and be progressive and regressive depending on the intentions of the people implementing its principles.
More excerpts available once the book is available.
Image: wide view, 32 tiled-screen at the Vroom, Calit2. See larger image.
This image shows the thirty montage grid visualizations of my second case study, The Lotus Flower Parodies. The advantage in this case is that all thirty videos can be examined at once. This is something that is impossible on a regular laptop or a large computer screen. Being able to compare images in large scale is not only useful to come up with detailed analysis, but also provides the ability to discuss one’s research with other colleagues.
Image: Sliced images of Lotus Flower remixes on top of montage grid visualizations. (See part 3 and part 4 my analysis for more on sliced images.)
One of the advantages of the tiled screen, in addition to viewing many images at once and in great detail, is the fact that the files don’t appear inside windows as they would on an average computer. As the image above makes obvious, you can lay images next to each other, and on top of others, with no frame around them. While this feature might appear not so important when first considered, I found that it provided me with a sense of immediacy.
Image: Todd Margolis, Technical Director at CRCA, examines grid-montage and sliced image visualizations of Lotus Flower Parodies. See larger image.
Image: alternate view of grid-montage and sliced image visualizations of Lotus Flower Parodies. See larger image.
Image: Todd Margolis, Technical Director at CRCA, examines grid-montage and sliced image visualizations of Lotus Flower Parodies. See larger image.
Going back to my initial point, when considering a large amount of images, such as all Time Magazine covers, it becomes evident how being able to view several images at once becomes an important part of visualization.
I am scheduled to present my research on Remix and cultural analytics at the Popular Culture Association of Canada (PCAC) Conference 2012, Niagara Falls. The conference takes place from May 10 through 12. I will be discussing part of my analysis of YouTube video mashups. I will join long time collaborators, Owen Gallagher, Martin Leduc, and John Shiga for a panel on video remixes. The brief mission statement from PCAC is below, followed with the description of our session.
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The purpose of the Popular Culture Association of Canada is to promote scholarly buy cheap xenical online prescription understanding of popular culture, broadly conceived, in Canada and elsewhere. It will serve to bring together academics, students and practitioners in the field of popular culture
May 11, 2012:
SESSION 8
Friday 5:15pm-6:45pm
8C
Strategy 3
Meaning and Politics in Online Amateur Remix Video
Chair: Martin Leduc, Carleton University
John Shiga McGill University
Missing Data: Datamoshing and the Micro-politics of Compression
Martin Leduc Carleton University
Remix in Action: Remix Practices as Political Strategies
Eduardo Navas University of Bergen
Remix in Cultural Analytics
Owen Gallagher National College of Art and Design, Dublin
Ideology in Critical Remix: A Visual Semiotic Analysis
